It
is supposed to be the shop where Dexter stops each morning to buy donuts.

Miguel
Prado, fresh from a confrontation with his wife (who caught him at Maria
LaGuerta's house), assumes that Dexter has set him up, and being a
control freak, Prado stages a confrontation with Dexter the next morning
at this donut shop.

He
tells Dexter that his department is investigating Dexter's sister, Debra
(and her personal relationship with an informant named Anton), assuming
it will allow him to blackmail Dexter into doing what he wants.

It
doesn't work, of course.

Dexter
simply escalates the battle by sneaking into Prado's house and
stealing a ring, a souvenir Prado has saved from his murder of Ellen Wolf,
and leaves in its place a ticket from a cleaners,
where Dexter has sent the bloody shirt in for cleaning.

Q.
What is it actually in real life?

A. A donut shop
& bakery - but not in Miami.

Q.
Where can I find it in real life?

A. This
is Colonial Bakery & Donuts,
at the southwest corner of 4th & Pacific
Avenue, in Long Beach, CA.

The
address is listed as 355 Pacific Ave,
but the entrance seen on the show actually faces the corner of 4th Street
& Pacific.

It
is right across the street from (south of) two other Dexter locations:
the supermarket (where a child molester
stalks Rita's kids), and the cleaners
(where Prado picks up the bloody shirt).

The
blue railings you see across the street, when Dexter enters through the
donut shop door, is the train station for Long Beach's Blue-Line light-rail
system. (That same station can be glimped in the supermarket scene, when
Dexter & Rita are in the market's parking lot.)

They
changed the place a bit for the filming, including fake signs painted on
windows.

And
they included a fake lead-in shot of Dexter getting out of his car near
the ocean. This donut shop is in an urban area about a mile inland, so
Dexter would have had a long walk from his car.

[
Be warned that this is a slightly scruffy
part of town, so exercise reasonable caution if you visit.
]

( Don't
confuse this donut shop with the Angel
Food Donuts shop from earlier in the same third season - the one where
Debra parks outside and sees Ramon abduct a suspect. That one is
in Long Beach too, but a good six miles north of this location. )

A. I
owe this one to my pal Tim Grobaty,
a columnist for the Long
Beach Press-Telegram. Tim mentioned in his daily column (long before
the show even went on the air), that the Dexter crew had been filming down
at Colonial Bakery. So naturally, when the show aired, I kept my
eye out for that blue & white building.... (Thanks, Tim!)